Recent Posts by Berhan K
340 posts(s) found
Many people actually just like to moan (read bitch) about things without having any clue what making, maintaining and developing such games cost in time and money (time is money on a paid job remember).
Danilo and Gabriel has done great so far with how things work. Having said that it doesn’t mean the game is perfect and they can relax. I think in order to take it to next level some things are vital before being able to go “mainstream”, or at least trying to reach a wider audience.
1) Economy in MMORGS is NEVER an easy task, this area needs to be researched really well. Can’t be taken lightly.
2) Player development patterns, you can’t have too many superstars, it’s just silly.
3) Tactics of the match day, ie what you as a manager can add to the game. I am working on such concept of my next game, can share my ideas with the developers.
4) Do not ignore the real life economy of this game or it will DIE, 100% for sure. Read this again!!! Several things can be done, for example a simple app that will scout players/tactics etc.. (for real money)
Sadly, I know this does almost no difference but maybe someone will read this and one day start making their own game, then there is much knowledge to gather from these posts.
/BK
>for w.e reason when fired or sold these very stagnant players develop in other teams yet for some reason dont at >my club even though they get more playing time and more games. its just utter bullshit
um, they simply do not like you perhaps??
/BK
go for it at http://en.eufo.de/, they have great data.
logos:
http://uefaclubs.com/html/1.html
http://www.vflnet.com/
My favorite was hqfl.dk but it’s been down for ages, I think English clubs kept threatening them with court action so they closed the shop.
It was really great.
another twist to it could be a world with old football clubs and crests/logos and shirts etc..just a thought.
like a world with 1990 or so teams.. if it’s possible..
Will, well done.
Charles, it would be like joining the Swedish league, 2-3 strong teams and you start with a crappy team, take 10 seasons to build them and win something, not the idea of multi-playing with others, is it?!
But whatever you find amusing in such setup I am sure it works for you. There are so many levels to play this game at, so playing for something that game wants people to play is not one of my main objectives. I just spend some time here, that’s all. Interaction with other managers is fun, rest needs much more work to make it interesting to try to do something fun, like trying to win a league or a cup.
/BK
Haha, Dimitri, congrats winning a multi-player game of two then!! ;)
Time to move to a real multi-player league?
/BK
Filipe, how nice are they really, is that a hidden variable for the player and you found out, through your years of research and analysis? :D
/BK
Gabriel and Danilo, there are problems that can be solved and there are problems that can not be solved by you.
Here are my general (and business-wise important) suggestions:
1. Move over to Facebook, the forums, the game, everything, use marketing there to get bigger crowd of managers.
2. Realistic player/club/economy model – do a research or get few students who do master thesis on statistics or similar
3. Tie knowledgeable people to key positions in RS project, as MS once did, responsible persons in areas as Data, Game Masters etc.
Do not think about the ownership too much, or you will end up with having the whole of a non-existing cookie, instead of a big slice of a big cake.
4. Have a (business) plan about what you intend to do with this game.
Most of you might not know this but MS HAD such a plan. I’ve seen those documents, they were very detailed and interesting, and keep in mind that those were written like 10 years ago. I might be wrong but it looks to me like you don’t know what/where to go with this project. At the moment it is as good as dead. If I was in deciding position with this I would end it sooner than later. It is as bad as this, sorry. I want to give you a reality check.
Not to be just negative, there is still some chance to get things right, if you do this properly. You have to do the right things though.
I would suggest that when starting to do something, start with a ‘WHY’ rather than ‘HOW’. Do not take one or two individuals opinion as a common rule on things.
Another thing:
Apps – you should consider this, in-game purchases are very interesting economy model in many “free” games today.
MS = ManagerSim
/BK
it will be more likely in 40-50 seasons if I stay that long :)
BK
oh Wow, who would have guessed Davison being a fan of me… :)
I missed you too, you have very interesting theories on most things.
/BK
Anyone?
/BK
I am a billionaire, I am off to the Bahamas.
Seriously though, thanks and have a nice game guys, I don’t think I want to play the game as it is at the moment. I might get back one day or not, too early to tell just yet, but it doesn’t really matter.
Good luck Danilo and Gabriel.
I’ll stay on the forums till end of June after that may not get here for a while.
If you for some reason want to stay in touch with me try facebook:
www.facebook.com/berhan.karagoez
or skype:
berhank
/BK
When doing things, why not do them properly.
CPU teams would not pay anything at all if they can have cheaper players, and there are a lot of cheaper players around.
BK
I agree, very BIG thanks go to Gabriel and Danilo. I KNOW what it means to handle a project like this, and keep up the good work guys, it will pay off at the end.
BK
wow, no replies?!
Once upon a time you use to care, guys!!
acse, moaning about results won’t get you anywhere. I doubt being paranoid about complaining leads to worse results will get you anywhere, maybe in the IT Security business but this is a wrong forum to post a job interest into that position.
Besides, if that was true, Davison would not win a single game. :)
This is a game we wish to enjoy many years to come, still there is some things we all have to contribute with, like bug reports, suggestions, helping newbies and so on. If you feel you have contributed but have received no attention/credit/response etc then it’s unfortunate.
Most of you guys have no idea what is to run such a project (besides having a normal life, wife, job, kids, etc) on your spare time. I know because I’ve been there, and I think I have something of value to offer to this community for free. Not all like what I have to say and I can accept that but you still need to think about what it is you want/request/look for in terms of game features & functionality before you decide that something is broken or not working as it is meant to. Are you being unrealistic? There are some things that need much attention but I am sure Danilo and Gabriel are aware of that and will take care.
For all who remember, back in the ManagerSim days, there were many issues with people complaining about results, economy suffering inflation, cheating, and so on. There is a very tricky thing to build the perfect economy in a MMOG, may have tried and failed. This is no different here.
I was searching the web for others who have tried and failed and run into an article:
http://skycandy.org/2011/04/inflation-the-long-death-of-mmos/
Interesting reading in my opinion. If YOU have the perfect solution I am sure you can sell it to the MMORG running companies for lots of money, really.
Until then we have to tweak and test.
acse, I wish you would reconsider and stay, we all have a part to play in this.
BK
Right, the knowledge is received already, time to move on, no?
/BK
Charles (and anyone interested in hearing) , by the manager/player/club interaction I mean, what a player/manager/club can or can’t expect, do, act upon, when it comes to:
- player development (player/manager interaction)
- transfers (manager/club interaction)
- loyalty and preferred career moves (player/club interaction)
Those areas need to be worked upon so you can have a more balanced structure in the game.
Berhan
PS. I am not OK with whatever everyone says, as someone clearly needs to tell people what is good and what is bad, I will deliver you the ugly truth, brutally, every time for as long as it’s needed or at least as long as I stick around.
Charles, that would be the farm-ville scenario, yes. :)
BK
Actually, a contract is a contract, no matter if is loan or purchase. You knew the player was on loan, it’s just one more parameter to consider when buying that you may not get your player back before the loan time is completed. You (in your head) thought that you would get that player back (based on what exactly I do not know!) then when you did not, you chose to moan about it and waste time and energy on nonsense?!
This is exactly the type of things I am warning you guys on stop spending time or request attention for. It is no good for anything. Sure, it’s cool to help a newbie about this but to manually go in and solve this (non) problem is really unnecessary. It really is not hard to find out that the player you are buying is on loan or not.
Frenchi, man up and accept the fact you made a poor judgement when buying that keeper while on loan, accept it and and move on.
Feature and functionality-wise this is perfect, no need for this to change at all.
Gah, come on boys, this is getting ridiculous.
/BK
I would say 3(?) major areas the game needs to be improved on:
1. Economy, this is DO or DIE, as simple as that. DO some research and find out what needs to be done! You really need to contain the economy in a sand-box kind of way so you do not get maybe more than 5% increase or decrease in economy trends/season. I have ideas more specific on HOW this could work.
2. Player/Manager/Club interaction, this is the bread and butter in every manager game:
– Fail here and you’ll have a mediocre game. Do a brilliant job here and you’ll see people(managers) joining the game.
3. An app is a good thing but you do not have the masses in a community. An app would add good for the existing manages but I doubt it will bring much more new faces as long as you do not have strong economy models and player/manager/club interaction. Just having an app wouldn’t make it a famous game. I like the idea of having an app, do not get me wrong. At the moment I am testing one called OFM (Online Football Manager). It is well designed, a similar thing would be ideal for RubySoccer. But if you look closer at the app you’ll see there is more under the hood.
If you are going to INVEST in an APP, you need to have a very specific strategy on what you need to achieve with that app. Think 100k or more users. If you start investing time (which you do not have) on an app (a completely different project) it will be a matter of time before you lose interest in the game and abandoning it. I think there is something to learn from the ManagerSim guys. So my "vote for nr.3 is NOTHING, first 2 are more important than anything else.
BK
Paulo, that was never a problem in ManagerSim, having too many computer managed clubs. Some countries were locked from getting human managers but still the mechanics behind the economy were better.
When reading your and Filipe’s comments I get the feeling of “Catch-22” over that kind of suggestions/logic, because in order to get more managers you need to have a “better game” and in order to make the game better you need to get more managers.
Make no mistake, if you have a great game, people will hear about it and get there. Of course you can aid by marketing, sometimes quite costly thing but on the other hand when the product is great, people will tell others about it.
To FIX the wrong logic all you need is correcting the formulas, code and so on, with or without more managers you need to handle the logic behind. Now the situation is perfect to learn from. We now know what to expect when there are not so many managers and many (80%+) CPU teams, ie how the economy works. What we can do is learn and adapt. When the scenario is reversed, and most of the clubs are managed by real managers then I am sure we’ll have other problems and the world will not be as perfect as you mean. Then we need to adapt again. It’s a learning and adapting process. Get that.
BK
Or how to make money in the game without caring to count potential ability, possible number of skill points being “unlocked” per season when developing players for sale, playing your players x number of games etc..
This story has a background, so here it is.
It was almost 10 years ago, I met this guy, let’s call him John. He was a successful businessman turned into Business Angel, after working his business up and selling it for quite many millions (in dollars). It was amazing how much ways there are in making money, I knew that but never expected to hear this.
What he did was buying flowers, tons of them, while they were quite small, not full-grown that is, cultivated them until they reached a certain size and then sold to the next guy in the chain, so the flower cultivating process from seed to product in a florist shop was x number of instances of cultivating from size A to size B to size C and so on. The best part of this was the process for John took a lot less time and was less risky if he was to do all by himself, that is from seed to flower-in-the-shop. So all the people involved in this process made money and they shared the risk between themselves. They made less money by getting paid for cultivating just a certain time. A cycle could be few weeks to 2 months but they got paid.
Same logic applied in RubySoccer:
Last season I just gathered few players on free transfer, cost me only their (low) wages for a season. Then I sold them this season. With the current transfer market mechanics, I got around 65M for 8 or so players. Now I could keep them for several more seasons and maybe make 50M of just one player but why bother?
So follow John and follow the money advice if you want to make 50-100M every season, at least until the transfer market mechanics are changed. Unless you are too greedy of course. ;)
BK
Maybe a transfer budget depending on the number of the years you spent in the club?
so 10% to 50% depending on how long your loyalty has been tested, something like:
1 year 10% of funds
2 year 15% of funds
3 year 20% of funds
4 year 30% of funds
5 year 40% of funds
5+ years = the maximum of 50% of the funds.
This would make it harder for cheaters to roam around and get teams with money and spend it all between themselves.
/BK
Charles, I am not talking about hiding the player value, player value can still exist but it would be calculated differently, also all the extra money have to be removed to, I am guessing but I think there are many clubs with more than couple of hundred millions, it’s very strange thing.
About managers leaving the game, I can not speak for Danilo and Gabriel but if it was my game and if I had to make a decision about quitting now or in a year, I’d say now, as there is no point of prolonging the “pain”.
A new dimension to implement things maybe is the answer but it all depends on where the game is going. There are far more worse games out there who charge you for money in some way, so manager leaving or coming is a marketing thing really. You can not keep making implementations to keep managers happy. At the same time, since I’ve been in in their (the developers) place I know it’s not easy to say no as the game grows it becomes “everyone” somehow. Still someone makes the decisions about what to be done or not.
Some say the managers would quit if the game is reset, and I could say that some will quit if the current situation continues but what do I know, right?
Just look at how many views this thread has and how many people wrote here, it is really sad to see.
/BK
yes you are new, let’s see if you are as happy as now in a few more seasons. :)
The task of implementing better logics for the cpu teams should not be really that hard, as the cpu teams “know” who the potential great players are and then they could make bids on those players first before trying to buy the 34 old guys.
/BK
Yepp, when developing a game you have to ignore some of the “advice” and take some or simply do some trial and error, and most importantly learn what works and what not.
That’s why I mean if we (others than the developers) really want to help developing the best game after SoccerSim leaving a void in that category, we need to find out what works and what not. That’s why we do not need to pay attention to who moans about result and transfers by cpu teams but adapt and change code, test and change, test and change some more.
In real world you have a development team and you have the test team, they both work by the requirements someone made.
Never can a testing team make change requests. You need to set a requirement team to make sure you do not have insane requirements, developers sticking to that requirements and then testers testing if the implementations mirror the required features.
Why is THIS different here? Reset the game already..
BK
Dimitri, we can have a chat/voice session and discuss, but it’s really alarming that there is not much more voices in here throwing theories and opinions.
To answer you quickly, all cpu team’s actions should be scripted and pre-calculated. “They” have an advantage over us, knowing the potential of a player and, if the transfer amounts are around 80M for a great player and they can afford it, and know that guy will become a greater and more valuable for the team than a 8M player, then they can go for him, else try to meet the requirements from the board, such as, stay in the division, title challenge, etc. On the other hand they could offer only what they think player is supposed to be worth, and that kind of levels can be added to a table in the database saying:
player with average 85 is 10-15M worth of value, 90 average is 15-25M, 95 is 25-40M, depending on:
- number of games at the highest level (country (where the player played) ranking in effect here)
- number of national games
- age (actually how many more productive years normally left, if player is not forced to quit/retire)
- stardom, like in Soccersim, silver stars and gold stars added value to player, added effect to merchandise
now, the money in the clubs have to be balanced and the formulas for generating money/costs have to be really closely monitored.
Now, if we had many human managers you wouldn’t need to script the actions of the CPU teams, the actions/transactions/fun would happen anyway. We have many cpu teams and we need to balance things or not at all, depends on what kind of game you want.
I guess there is not a quick and easy answer Dimitri.
/BK
Dimitri, as I have been saying for years, player value is an evil thing to attach to a player. At least, it should be calculated in a different way.
When you base offers/transfer price on “player value” you make a way open for crazy things like you see happen in the game, crazy amounts of money paid by CPU teams, no “decent players” to buy unless offered crazy amounts of money. Cheaters will have easier to do “legit” transfers, pointing to the player value.
Some players have a value of 200-500 M, perfect for cheating and shuffling money around and very crazy at the same time.
All the logic that has been based on any calculation of the player value is very hard to do or dismiss. It’s not an easy task but if this is a real beta testing of the game then we should be open to changes really. I would have no problems dealing with players without any value attribute attached. I wouldn’t mind losing 90% of the money in the club, no use of having 300M anyway when no one is selling.
BK
Dimitri, in my opinion, No, the player value attribute kills the game, it would be interesting to see how people would rate/value players if it was to be removed. I agree there should be some kind of value to represent the “value” of the player but it could be one of two things:
a) the transfer price of the players last transfer OR when missing (as the player could be a “home grown” player)
b) a valuation of your board/club/assistant manager or something like that. Something like:
“Noé Delage is valued somewhere between 3-5M.” in stead of “$44,073,674”
It’s too late with just stopping the cpu teams from spending the money, as many clubs now have several hundreds of millions.
I think most fair thing would be to remove the last 0 from each value in the game.
Meaning if you had 300M in the club account it should now hold 30M and if a player was worth 150M, it will now be 15M. That would temporarily “help” but a more aggressive approach is needed. Logic has to prevent this from happening and a suggestion of players having attitude would help. Also in most management games you have a max skill for each skill. That has to be redone. And I would “lose” about 250M myself but it’s worth it, as this is beta-testing, no?!
In reality we have many great players but that is known from a SET of 265M people playing football/soccer. It’s not too difficult to find 100 great players for several countries, but percentage of great players in the game from the number of available players is WAY TOO BIG. Not good. It creates an unnatural balance of talent, and when the cpu teams can afford a promising player they will make a move to get him. That is a great feature.
Developers (and/or anyone interested in data statistics of football, read this:
http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/fifafacts/bcoffsurv/emaga_9384_10704.pdf
When you have a good talent model you will see how great and enjoyable the game is, and I can not stress this enough about how important this is. You REALLY have to be paranoid about your data when making such games. Period.
BK
Well, I too have no problems making money in the club and last season I had something around there, and spent some of it, probably around 200M but it’s a bit silly. It is not about being able to make money, as all the seasoned managers know how to do that, but a new manager would have some problems entering the game and having a nice game experience. Now if you want to make a great team, your only chance is having 20 000 M or build your own team from free transferred youths, it would take 10 seasons but it can be done. The problem is you do not have that kind of money and while building your own team you have to take risks of getting bad results and getting fired on the process, and there you hand over a few seasons labor to someone else, and that for me is a game killer.
I think all the money would be just fine if every price/amount lost one 0. Mind that it costs still same amount of money to build stadiums, hire coaches, scouting etc. Is that right?
I don’t know about you guys but for me it has become a new type of game, just bank as much as possible while avoiding getting fired over the bad results. A new type of simulation, I stopped looking at the match results, or caring should I say.
BK
the game is in a limbo state, and people would rather care making 500M on faulty logic in the game rather than play the game as it was supposed to be played?
Do you even remember what it was like playing such games?
Sure some of it was winning titles and competing with friends and some rivalry was interesting aspect of playing together. I would like to also think that some of the playing itself was being a good guy/friend/player/manager that would help a newbie and the community around the game play was as fun as playing the game itself. It used to be fun to talk about the game, no matter what the game was.
When I see all the fantasy transactions, people refusing to sell a player because they believe they can never find an equal replacement, I think this thing is doomed.
There are several major flaws in the game, other than that the game is amazing.
My suggestions would be:
- fix the economics or die, as simple as that, the game will lose it’s users if economics is not fixed. Period.
- get rid of all the thousands of the superstars, it’s not realistic/good for anything
- get rid of all the cheaters, allow logging in with facebook only or a validation routine validating that the player is a real one. If need be – get a payment for the validation routine.
You guys are thinking that all the fake and fictive millions in your club will make you great or give you some kind of edge in whatever you are pursuing but it will result in only one thing – killing the game.
Just my 2 cents..
Berhan